Route Variants

[Brij Nanda]

Hi all

I am working on best practices of using GTFS. During my study, I come across one interesting topic " route variants".

Routes may change as per change in stops, schedule during some days of week. We need to pour additional I information in GTFS feed, but what is best way?

Some developers may change Routes.txt file by adding route variants e.g Route 1 may have route variants like 1-A, 1-B, !-C.....

But as per my study, its not the best practice, best practice is not to add route variants, but change in Trips as per route.

e.g. changes for a route on school days and school holidays.

For more information visit https://support.google.com/transitpartners/answer/6377422?hl=en&ref_topic=6377359

[Aaron Antrim]

GTFS Best Practices provides a few clarifying notes on travel variations and branches of routes:

http://gtfs.org/best-practices/#routes_6

(See recommendations 6 and 7 for routes.txt).

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[l...@frachet.ca]

Hi Brij!

The best answer I could give is the one given by Google:

"Organize routes.txt entries in the same way that you communicate physical routes or lines to your riders. For example, group your timetables by route in routes.txt, just as you would when presenting them on a website or in a printed booklet. The structure of your routes.txt file must correspond directly to the timetable routes." (From the link you gave in your email)

Some agencies will list the variants as distinct routes in their list of route, and in such case you should do the same in route.txt. Some other agencies brand them as just one route in their communications to the riders, and in such case you should do the same in route.txt.

Which case are you working on? Does this agency have some website, leaflet or transit map that we could use?

[Raj Jagad]

Hello Brij Nanda

I did check a best practice resource at http://gtfs.org/best-practices/ and WorkGroup that manages the gtfs standard must know that you are trying to accommodate route variation based on stops. This would bee manage my calender-date.txt and calendar.txt where you would include  calendar.service_name as   1-A, 1-B, 1-C and the service must depended on weekday/week#/Weekend/  Or Date-in-a-year/holiday/... BUT it cannot depended on stops example. IF you wish to vary route based on if the stop is requested by the passenger. This is no longer a transit. It is a group Taxi Service. And there is no GTFS feed for group taxi service unless the Group taxi has schedule-stop-time.txt that varies according to calender and service_name. So you can definitely have route-id  1-A, 1-B, 1-C  included in the route.txt as branches of route-id = 1. That is according to my understanding of gtfs

I hope this helps. The standards are not set in stone. Best practice is a live document and can be changed by sending a proposed amended change to gt...@rmi.org

I hope this helps

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